2008 programme launch

This isn’t deliberate, it’s simply that I’ve barely had time to draw breath since the launch last week.
Within hours of the official jamboree at St George’s Hall (more of that anon) I was on my way to exotic Luton airport to join a schools’ tour to Auschwitz.
The job is nothing if not varied.
My account of the trip is due to be published in the Echo on Monday.
Suffice to say it was a sobering experience, and not one I would particularly relish repeating, although I am glad I went and the fact more and more Merseyside teenagers are going to get the chance to visit the death camps is to be applauded.
Anyway, it means I have only begun to really digest last week’s extravaganza.
We at the Echo had been given a sneak preview of the programme to prepare a special 12-page supplement to appear in last Tuesday’s paper.
So at lease I knew what was on the cards come 2008, unlike the majority of those invited to the St George’s Hall ‘happening’.
They spent two hours watching buxom burlesque dancers, scrumming for bowls of Scouse and dodging giant balloons anchored by bags of Tate and Lyle sugar without really realising what it was all about.
There had been a conscious decision taken in the hallowed halls of the culture company not to have the usual ‘warm wine and video’ launch which is the scourge of canape munchers everywhere.
Fair enough.
The event was therefore put in the hands of an arts organisation. Even the food was provided by artists rather than regular caterers.
The great hall did look stunning, the string quartet in the small concert room diverting (but not as diverting as women in their underwear for some!), and there was a fabulous Chinese musical group going for it in the north entrance hall where I bumped into John Gorman, looking bemused in a red waistcoat.
But unless you happened to glance at one of the few TV screens which were running a list of the 2008 programme, you simply had no idea of what to anticipate.
This made it particularly difficult for yours truly who had been tasked with getting reaction from the various Scouserati littering the building.
In the end I had to grab a press pack, put the diary of events under victims noses and say ‘read this, what do you think?’
Time will tell on the programme.
We are assured it is only the first round of highlights and there is more, much more, to come.
But what is certain is that there’s only one person who can make sure you have a great 2008, and that’s you yourself.
Me, I’m planning on having a ball - and that’s not just of the Viennese variety.